| Grand Forks Hotel | |
|---|---|
 Grank Forks Hotel in 1898, second building from left | |
  Location within Canada | |
| General information | |
| Location | Grand Forks, Yukon |
| Coordinates | 63°55′13″N139°19′01″W / 63.9202°N 139.3169°W |
| Opening | August 1897 |
| Closed | 1911 |
| Design and construction | |
| Developer | Belinda Mulrooney |
The Grand Forks Hotel was a prominent roadhouse during the Klondike Gold Rush, situated near Dawson City in the Yukon region of Canada.
In 1897, large amounts of gold were discovered in the Yukon, prompting huge numbers of prospectors to travel to the remote region, an event that is known as the Klondike Gold Rush. Belinda Mulrooney, a small-time businesswoman, arrived in Dawson City that year, intending to import goods and establish her own enterprises. [1] She established a restaurant and a shop in the city and a business building homes for the immigrant prospectors. [2] Mulrooney began to investigate opportunities outside Dawson City, along the creeks where the gold was being mined and decided that the spot where the Eldorado Creek met the Bonanza Creek would be an ideal place for a roadhouse hotel. [3]
Mulrooney's new roadhouse was a large, two-story building constructed of logs. [4] On the ground floor was a bar and dining room, with the first floor used for accommodation in the form of multiple bunk beds. [5] At the rear of the property were kennels for the various husky dogs used for transport in the region. [4] Contractors were brought in from Dawson City to carry out the work, which was complete by August 1897. [5] A separate cabin for Mulrooney was later built nearby. [5] A safe in the hotel was used to store the gold typically used as money amongst the prospecting community. [6] The timbers used to build the hotel shrunk over time, however, resulting in a numerous gaps emerging in the structure. [7]
The Grand Forks Hotel provided food, drink and accommodation to the local and visiting community. [8] Despite chronic shortages during the winter months of the gold rush, Mulrooney was able to keep the hotel suitably stocked, with a dinner costing $3.50 and accommodation and food charged at $12; the drinks and cigars served were the most expensive in the region. [9] Typical meals included bacon and beans and canned meats, with moose heart and pickled nose of moose served on special occasions. [10] The roadhouse also doubled as a trading post, a centre for storing gold and a church. [11]
A community grew up around the hotel and became the second largest town in the Yukon region. [12]
In 1899, the Klondike gold rush had peaked. Mulrooney decided to leave the Yukon and sold the Grand Forks Hotel in May 1899. [13] After 1906, the town went into decline and heavy dredging equipment destroyed the site in 1911. [14]
The Klondike is a region of the territory of Yukon, in northwestern Canada. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon River from the east at Dawson City. The area is merely an informal geographic region, and has no function to the territory as any kind of administrative region. It is located in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation.
The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon in northwestern Canada, between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896; when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of prospectors. Some became wealthy, but the majority went in vain. It has been immortalized in films, literature, and photographs.
Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–1899). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest municipality in Yukon.
Joseph Juneau was a French Canadian miner and prospector known for co-founding, with Richard Harris, the city of Juneau, Alaska, United States. The city has been the political capital of Alaska since 1900.
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park is a national historical park operated by the National Park Service that seeks to commemorate the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. Though the gold fields that were the ultimate goal of the stampeders lay in the Yukon Territory, the park comprises staging areas for the trek there and the routes leading in its direction. There are four units, including three in Municipality of Skagway Borough, Alaska and a fourth in the Pioneer Square National Historic District in Seattle, Washington.
The Yukon Field Force, later termed the Yukon Garrison, was a unit of 203 officers and men from the Permanent Force of the Canadian Militia that served in the Yukon between 1898 and 1900. The force was created in the wake of the Klondike Gold Rush in response to fears that the United States might attempt to seize the region. It left Ottawa on May 6, 1898, travelling by rail and sea to the port of Glenora in British Columbia. From there, the unit made an arduous journey of 890 kilometres (550 mi) on foot and using makeshift boats to Fort Selkirk, where they established their headquarters. A detachment of 72 men was sent to the boom town of Dawson City to support the North-West Mounted Police, with duties that included guarding the gold deposits of the local banks. As the fears of an annexation reduced, pressures grew for the recall of the force. The force was halved in size in July 1898 and the remainder were finally withdrawn in June 1900.
A roadhouse or stopping house (Canada) is a small mixed-use premises typically built on or near a major road in a sparsely populated area or an isolated desert region that serves passing travellers, providing food, drinks, accommodation, fuel, and parking spaces to the guests and their vehicles. The premises generally consist of just a single dwelling, permanently occupied by a nuclear family, usually between two and five family members.
Alexander "Big Alex" McDonald (1859–1909) was a Canadian gold prospector who made a fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush, earning himself the title "King of the Klondike".
Belinda Mulrooney (1872–1967) was an entrepreneur and purportedly the "richest woman in the Klondike". She made one fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush, lost it, and amassed a second, which lasted most of the rest of her life.
The Nome Gold Rush was a gold rush in Nome, Alaska, approximately 1899–1909. It is separated from other gold rushes by the ease with which gold could be obtained. Much of the gold was lying in the beach sand of the landing place and could be recovered without any need for a claim. Nome was a sea port without a harbor, and the biggest town in Alaska.
The Klondike Gold Rush is commemorated through film, literature, historical parks etc.
Gold Trails and Ghost Towns is a Canadian historical documentary show, created and produced by television station CHBC-TV in Kelowna, British Columbia for Canadian syndication and hosted by Mike Roberts with historian/storyteller Bill Barlee. The show was filmed in a studio which resembled an old trapper's cabin. Mike and Bill discussed prospectors and the history of British Columbia around 1900.
Thomas William O'Brien was a Klondike gold rush entrepreneur who was best known for his Klondike Mines Railway and Klondike brewery businesses. He was also elected as a member of the Yukon Territorial Council, and was the first president of the Yukon Order of Pioneers, Klondike Lodge.
The O'Brien Brewing and Malting Company, also known as the Klondike Brewery, was a brewery founded by Thomas O'Brien in Klondike City, an adjoining settlement to Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada from 1904 to 1919. It was established during a period in which Dawson City was expected to become an important regional city, and used modern techniques and equipment imported from California. It was initially successful, selling 68,748 gallons of beer in 1905, but Dawson's population declined and growing temperance attitudes threatened the business. O'Brien sold the company in 1915, and in 1919 prohibition forced its closure. The brewery was abandoned, and the remains of the site are now owned by the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation.
Michael "Black Mike" Winage was a Serbian Canadian miner, pioneer and adventurer who settled in the Yukon towards the end of the Klondike Gold Rush and who allegedly lived to be 107 years old.
Anton Stander, was a pioneer and the prospector from the great Klondike Gold Rush. He was one of the six wealthiest prospectors in Klondike.
Grand Forks is a ghost town and former community at the confluence of Bonanza Creek and Eldorado Creek in the Canadian territory of Yukon. First settled about 1896, it became the second-largest settlement in the Klondike. With approximately 10,000 people living in or by Grand Forks during the Klondike Gold Rush, it was the only community besides Dawson City to have a municipal government. The Grand Forks Hotel was a roadhouse here during the gold rush.
Discovery Claim is a mining claim at Bonanza Creek, a watercourse in the Yukon, Canada. It is the site where, in the afternoon of August 16, 1896, the first piece of gold was found in the Yukon by prospectors. The site is considered to be the place where the Klondike gold rush started. It is located around 17 kilometres south-southeast of Dawson City. The Discovery claim was designated a National Historic Site of Canada on July 13, 1998.
Dredge No. 4 is a wooden-hulled bucketline sluice dredge that mined placer gold on the Yukon River from 1913 until 1959. It is now located along Bonanza Creek Road 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) south of the Klondike Highway near Dawson City, Yukon, where it is preserved as one of the National Historic Sites of Canada. It is the largest wooden-hulled dredge in North America.
The history of the North-West Mounted Police in the Canadian north describes the activities of the North-West Mounted Police in the North-West Territories at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th. The mounted police had been established to control the prairies along the Canadian-United States border in 1873, but were then also deployed to control the Yukon region during the Klondike Gold Rush, and subsequently expanded their operations into the Hudson Bay area and the far north. The force was amalgamated in 1920 to form part of the new Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who continued their predecessors' work across the region.
